In Lebanon, we have one seaside road where traffic direction reverses reliably at 11am and 11pm to lower congestion and help more people get into or out of Beirut as fast as possible. It doesn't do miracles on very busy days, but it helps a bit. The idea isn't unique to us and if you live in big metropolitan U.S areas with heavy traffic on some of the highways, then you know what reversible lanes are. The problem is that mapping software doesn't take these lanes into consideration when planning your routes, or isn't always up-to-date on the direction or load of traffic in those lanes.

HERE Maps is changing this by adding reversible lanes support in 12 U.S and European (well, there's only one European) cities in its Android app as well as other platforms (iOS, Bing Maps, Fire Phone). Drivers should be able to see the direction the lane is open in and the traffic flow, and thus make better informed routing decisions. The feature is also joining the HERE API, so developers can integrate it in their own apps.

Here is the list of the 12 cities where HERE's reversible lanes will be available:

Comments

Pez Nospam

Best sat nav app I've used so far. The offline maps are brilliant.

CoronationSlave !

is it better than Google Maps (when Internet is On not Off) ?

Pez Nospam

I find that Google Maps are brilliant for my country. But found the experience of using for turn by turn navigation wasn't good. This was about 1 year ago, so thing may have improved since then. I came from TOMTOM so maybe I was a bit bias when I used Google Maps. I drive a lot around Europe so Google Maps wasn't an option.

I still do most of my routing planning with Google Maps though. :-)

Grayson

There are pros and cons of each. Google Maps probably has more business information than HERE, like store hours and reviews, and it automatically suggests faster routes if they become available due to changing traffic, but HERE does a few things better as well, like showing the current speed limit and being able to set a warning if you go some specified level over it, plus full offline mode of course.

Google Maps is still my go to in the end though unless I'm out in the middle of nowhere with no service.

Миша Коновалов

I think Google Maps is the best maps and navigation, but it cannot work without Internet connection. So my choice: when I'm in my country, I'm using GM; when I'm abroad, I'm using Maps.me and HERE (Maps.me has better specification, but HERE has better navigation)

jonathan3579

I was going to say we don't have that in Houston until I realized they were talking about our HOV lanes. (Which Google doesn't use at all.)